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News
Release February 8, 2002 The Inaugural Address of
Chairman Betts, Bishop Edwards, Mayor Turnage, Mrs. Johnson, Attorney-General Cooper, Congresswoman Clayton, members of the College community, trustees, friends of Wesleyan: We celebrate Wesleyan College in a ritual many centuries old. The ritual is both joyous and solemn. It reinforces our sense of tradition and community. Mr. Betts and Dr. Pittman, you have today formally ratified the trust that was placed in me almost exactly one year ago. I cannot tell you how profoundly honored I am to have been entrusted with the leadership of Wesleyan College, with the stewardship of its faculty, staff and students, of its resources, of its alumni, and of its aspirations. Before all here assembled, I pledge to do my utmost to fulfill faithfully those responsibilities. Today’s celebration is for the College, and I would like to begin by recognizing several people who have served Wesleyan with distinction. Two former Presidents are with us today: -Dr. Bruce Petteway, President 1975-1986 and Mrs. Petteway -Dr. Herman Collier Jr., interim President 1994-1995 and Mrs. Collier I would like each to stand to be thanked for their dedication to our cause. I would like to recognize as well the arrival of my new friend and colleague, our new Vice-President for Academic Affairs and Dean of the College, Dr. Lee Riggins. Lee preceded my own arrival by one half day – as such I have come to rely on his "historical" perspectives. He comes to Wesleyan College from Bowling Green University in Ohio, where he served as Dean of the College of Music with distinction. We are fortunate to benefit from his wise counsel and his judicious understanding of the academy. I would ask that he stand, and that this inauguration celebrate his arrival as well. Although I count the opportunity to be here at Wesleyan College, and in Rocky Mount, as one of the greatest and humbling experiences of my life, I know that there are many people who have made this possible. Those who know me, know that I would not be here at all without the leadership and assistance of my wife Carla. There is the story of the college head who was driving with his wife, and stopped for gas. After chatting amicably with the gas attendant, she said to her husband as they pulled away, "that was my first boy friend in high school." "Aren’t you glad", he asked unwisely, "that you married me instead of a gas jockey?" No, she replied, "if I had married him, he would have become a College President too." There is more than a little truth to this story. Carla and I are a team and I know that it was as much what she did during the past ten years that got us here today. I would ask that she stand and be welcomed. Ten years ago, when I was first installed as a university President, I thanked our children for putting up with peripatetic parents. I doubt that they knew what peripatetic meant. But I can assure you that Carla and I could not have achieved much without asking our children to endure sacrifices – moving about, changing friends, putting up with absence. But peripatetic now means that they get to fly to North Carolina, and we are delighted that they are here. We are proud of them. Would Adrian and his wife Laura, and our daughters Sophia and Alexandra please stand. Finally, I would ask that our family members who have come from Canada to be here with us today stand to be welcomed. If you think that one looks like me, you are not mistaken. Among those standing is my twin brother. I have entitled this address "Why Are We Here?" Why are we here? What is our purpose? Why are we here assembled in the midst of medieval splendor and symbols? Are we hopelessly tied to the past? Are we willfully blind to change? Are we contemptuous of the future? Do we not get it? There is of course much that we can learn from the past. Our robes remind us that learning in a community of scholars is an ancient and worthwhile habit. The essence of our very being as a college – the education, growth and development of each individual committed to our charge, has not changed in the many hundreds of years since these robes were first worn. Consider this letter from a student to his father: "This is to inform you that I am studying at Oxford with the greatest diligence, but the matter of money stands greatly in the way of my promotion, as it is now two months since I spent the last of what you sent me. The city is expensive and makes demands; I have to rent lodgings, buy necessaries, and provide for many other things which I cannot now specify. Wherefore I respectfully beg …that … you may assist me..." Does that sound familiar? Or this letter from father to son studying in Orleans in France: "I have recently discovered that you live dissolutely and slothfully, preferring license to restraint and play to work and strumming a guitar while the others are at their studies, … you have read but one volume of law while your more industrious companions have read several. …I exhort you to repent of your dissolute and careless ways that you may no longer be called a waster."1 The remarkable feature of these letters is that they were written in the thirteenth century! In this medieval pageant of parents paying and students playing, we might gain some perspective. The Spanish-born American George Santayana wrote, famously, that those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."2 I am not so sure. As we follow, year upon dreary year, the wars and bloodshed in Ireland, in the Balkans, in the Middle East, one cannot but think that if the warring factions could forget their history, peace might just break out. And the good thing about universities and colleges is that they have not remained a slave to the past. The secret of their longevity, in fact, has been their ability to adapt, sometimes to forget their past, to be resilient. One thing has not changed. For the more than three and a half centuries since the beginning of Harvard College in 1636, a central tenet in the American educational system is the belief in its utility. What was remarkable was the insistence that education be seen as a social good, a necessary precondition to a society more egalitarian and democratic than that which the colonists left behind. This belief has not wavered. Nothing can be more striking in contrast than the prescription for civil society advanced by the British political philosopher Thomas Hobbes not long after Harvard College had been founded. By nature, wrote Hobbes in Leviathan, people are warlike and ungovernable. In a state of nature, there were "No arts, no letters, no society, and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death, and the life of man solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."3 The only recourse, he wrote, was for the people as a whole to submit themselves to rule from above, to voluntarily renounce their right to self-government and to transfer authority to govern to a sovereign. Compare this with the democratic role proposed for the new American Republic. "Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government", wrote Thomas Jefferson. "I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education."4 If it has always been clear that education was seen as necessary to a democracy, the question of how education could accomplish that has never been clear at all. It is held as an article of faith that the American college has always been grounded in the liberal arts, and that by a liberal education is meant learning for its own sake. But almost from the beginning, the view that a liberal education was unresponsive to more practical needs prompted adaptation and change. King’s College, the fifth oldest institution of higher learning in the nation, mixed pragmatism with the liberal arts at its founding in 1754. Later to become Columbia University, it announced its intent to provide practical knowledge "of everything Useful for the Comfort, the convenience and the elegance of life." In fact, so enthusiastic were colleges to introduce applied courses that Yale University felt the need to commission and publish a famous defense of the liberal arts as early as 1828.5 The social utility of higher education has been embraced by Wesleyan College, as by many others, from our inception. Our Methodist heritage, in fact, is based upon this principle. Methodism recognized the importance of education for all young adults. Education was liberating. The United Methodists always saw education as something to be made available to all regardless of social standing, religion, ethnic identity, or gender. North Carolina Wesleyan College has remained true to this principle, and will continue to do so. We are a diverse community. Like most of the private liberal arts colleges in North Carolina, our students come not from the homes of the wealthy, as some would argue, but from homes of modest means. And in this context, there is a public policy issue concerning higher education that can no longer be avoided. Publicly funded education was so conceived in order to make education accessible to the people. Private education was established in many cases for the sons and daughters of those with means. This distinction no longer prevails, and, in fact, in North Carolina is closer to being reversed. Some forty percent of the students at Chapel Hill come from families with incomes above $100,000. The private colleges, which, like us, see some ninety percent of students in need of financial aid, could only dream of such income levels. Yet, paradoxically, it is the better-off families, who send their children to the public system, who benefit from heavily subsidized tuition and fees. In 1999-2000, the average state subsidy per full-time student enrolled in a UNC school was more than five times the average grant per student enrolled at a private college. Each time a North Carolina student chooses to go to an independent school, the State saves almost $7000 per year of study. This is equivalent to a subsidy paid to the State system by independent college students and their families. In this fashion, independent colleges save the State some $200 million each year. In a time of declining resources and State budgetary shortfalls, it is time that a serious examination be undertaken of the public fee and subsidy structure. A large public subsidy to well-off families in the public system is surely not what Jefferson and this nation’s founders had in mind. Where Wesleyan College might safely depart from the lessons of history is in the discussion over what the correct curriculum should be. The debate over what students should learn is no longer, I would submit, of real meaning. There is much to support the American philosopher Alfred North Whitehead’s belief that "the antithesis between a technical and a liberal education is fallacious."6 In fact, to suggest that a purely liberal arts education is really ‘knowledge for its own sake’ is to miss the point of the liberal arts. The traditional disciplines that are usually meant by this term are in fact extremely useful, and it is for that reason that something of a resurgence of support for such an education has been noticeable. I would further submit, and in fact believe firmly, that it is the process of learning that makes a liberal arts college what it is. That process is partly a function of scale and emphasis. Small intimate learning communities, led by professors who teach, help to forge the development of each student. We marvel at the exploits of the brilliant student who sails through with high honors and other rewards. But the reality for many is far different. For most students, both young and adult, success is a culmination of small miracles. The professor-student nexus is a precious experience for both parties. It helps turn dreams into realities. And it is often taken for granted. But when we hear of the growing recognition by employers of the skills that liberal arts graduates demonstrate – verbal, thinking, problem solving and communication skills – it is the learning environment that is as responsible for that recognition as the course of study. It is the preoccupation with the simple transmission of course materials that prompted retired Stanford President Gerhard Casper to worry that "with online learning we could see for the first time since the 19th century a real shift back to a rather narrow view of education."7 My vision for North Carolina Wesleyan sees an even greater emphasis on learning communities of professors who have fewer classes and more opportunity for the close personal attention they can give to each student... This last – students developing a confident sense of their own voices - is important, for it has been observed that the root cause of man’s inhumanity to man is to be found in the weakness of the individual. In a recent analysis in the New York Review of Books of the origins of the violence of September 11, the Israeli philosopher and peace-activist Avishai Margalit wrote of the unfulfilled people who submerge petty egos into a mass movement, who seek for personal satisfaction in the name of a Fuhrer, an Emperor, false God or Allah. In the submersion of the individual will, the demagogic and often dangerous leader with a black soul personifies all one’s yearning for grandeur.9 The individual is left in a hollow state. But it is the very fulfilling of individuals that WE can do best. What North Carolina Wesleyan College is about, the reason why we are here, is the fulfillment of each individual student. U.S. President James A. Garfield once remarked that his ideal college consisted of his professor "on one end of a log and a student on the other."10 His description of the engagement of the student by the professor has endured. It is that engagement that leads to a life of fulfillment. It is that coming together of teacher and learner that leads, ultimately, away from the violence of the unfulfilled individual to the great popular demos that Jefferson foresaw. That log is a worthy reminder of why we are here. Ladies and Gentlemen, North Carolina Wesleyan is a young college. While many would, and do, compare it to much older and established colleges of distinction, I prefer to marvel at its achievements in its first four decades. In fact, if we compare our brief history to that of what are perhaps the two most distinguished liberal arts colleges in the Nation – Williams and Amherst Colleges in Massachusetts – we have done remarkably well. During Williams’ first half-century, the trustees spent more time and energy in trying to close the College than in trying to keep it open. Convinced that almost everything about it was impossible - its location, its funds, its enrollment – one President despairingly led a group of students over the mountains into the Connecticut Valley, where he founded Amherst! Compare that to our beginnings. We have many loyal friends and benefactors who have built our lovely campus. We have a faculty and staff that the entire community can be proud of. We have several thousand alumni for whom the College has made a real difference. We have climbed mountains to produce national champions, but we have yet to go over a mountain in search of a greener valley! We have a strategic vision that points to a stellar future of growth and maturation. It is that path that we shall follow. What does this mean? It means that we will make further investments in our faculty and staff. We will invest in our admissions and recruitment programs. We will invest in our fund-raising and development programs. We will invest in our library. We will invest in our classrooms and laboratories. We will invest in our student support services. As I look to the future, I see a new library extension and considerably improved library resources. I see a new recreation center. I see a significant increase in the number of faculty members. I see increased co-operation with and service to both the City of Rocky Mount and eastern North Carolina. These investments in our future will necessitate a thorough examination of our fee structure, and a reversal of the fee policy implemented five years ago. Simply put, moving to the next level will require improved funding. It will require a significant development program. It will require commitment from all of us. Most of all, it will rely on a shared vision of the future. As Balthazar remarked in Lawrence Durrell’s novel Clea, "We become what we dream."11 Much has been written about the role of the college president – some flattering, some not, some humorous, some serious. I will not bore you with this. What I will say is that to serve in this capacity, to live and to work among students, is a rare privilege. We have been entrusted with people’s lives. We have a duty to do our best for them. That duty is an opportunity as well as a privilege. We cannot, and we will not, fail to make those investments in their lives. Wesleyan College has meant a great deal to many people, and as we go forward, we will ensure that the building blocks for growth and development are firmly in place. Growth in size will be modest. Substantial growth in quality is our goal. Tom Betts has often spoken to me about the need for each one of us to leave this College better for our having been here. I pledge to do just that, and I ask for your support as we march down that road to progress. I like the cause. I like the company. The march is on. Our time here today too marches on, and I am reminded of the Roman orator Cicero’s exhortation that "brevity is a great charm."12 I leave you with a modern version of this sentiment. Christina Foyle, of Foyle's Bookshop in London, used to hold literary luncheons to which she invited prominent authors and prominent others. The worst luncheon she could recall was the one held for Sir Walter Gilbey, head of the gin-making firm. "He spoke for one and a half hours," she remembered. "A man in front of my father fell asleep, so [my father] hit the chap with the toastmaster's gavel. The man awoke, and said, "Hit me again, I can still hear him."13 I fear the gavel awaits. [1] Readings in English History
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Last modified by webmaster@ncwc.edu
on 12/19/05 |
"Why Are We Here?"